Computer Tomography (CT) is a technique for scanning human body layers with X-rays under computer control. It utilizes the fact that different human tissues exhibit different densities under X-rays to perform comparison and thereby enabling the accurate display of an anatomical structure. Usually, the medical images obtained through CT are observed and analyzed by doctors or similar personnel so as to obtain pathological information, which is taken as the basis for diagnosis.
However, due to the fact that the number of tissues displayed in CT images is large and the boundaries between the tissues are blurring, only experienced doctors can obtain accurate pathological information from CT images. In addition, some pathological information may be neglected by the doctors, thereby causing incomplete information. For example, in the case of a CT scan of abdomen, a doctor obtains from the CT images certain pathological information with which calculi in the urinary system is thus analyzed, often resulting in misjudgments or incorrect judgments of calculi.
There was disclosed a prior art method for automatic generating color multi-windows CT images, which was for processing CT images so as to attain the purpose of highlighting pathological information and helping the doctor to obtain more and more accurate pathological information. The detailed description of that method is found in the patent application No. ZL200310118965.2. According to that method, CT images are separated into several regions such that different organs or tissues are assigned to different regions. The organs or tissues are assigned automatically based on the distribution ranges of the CT values of the organs or tissues in the CT images as well as the topological structure of the organs. Next, such regions are corrected. Then, such regions are colored with different colors. Finally, a pathological report is generated, and the multi-windows color CT image is printed out along with a diagnostic result.
However, the target regions cannot be highlighted accurately and directly in the CT images according to the prior art. As a result, the doctor cannot directly obtain some pathological information from the CT images, such as positions, attributes and other parameters of the target regions, and thus the doctor cannot obtain the complete image information.
In general, in the existing image processing techniques, especially CT image processing, it is an urgent technical task for those skilled in the art to enable the display of required target regions accurately from numerous, complicated, and similar image data.